I watched the Haze change colors with the underlying elements of the plateau and different energies dominant in areas. My Trembling Domain flashed past hundreds of veins of ores and elements Energized with different powers, sinking into the stones and extending like serpents out and down, begging for miners to come and take them away.

They formed sort of an axiomatic network of anchors to bleed out the energies of the Warp, sucking them away and out into the world. Of course, mining them would remove those anchors, and what might happen then?...

The idea that the Warp is what made this planet viable as a mining world, and yet would eventually be the source of its destruction when those veins were mined out and the Zone exploded out and took the whole planet, was definitely on my mind. Philius was not too happy to concur with me, but while he technically had the authority to abandon the planet, realistically it was impossible. The amounts of Energized materials and their variety meant it simply wouldn’t happen unless you parked a fleet atop the planet. Too much money to be made... as if mega-cities sitting on an alkaline world didn’t show that.

In the meantime, I was effectively a mass surveyor daring to go where none of the mining corps dared to. The amount of the wealth I was running past would make even the Great Families palpitate... but they simply had no ability to exploit it with the Warp Zone so close. Building a facility so close would be throwing their money into a shredder...

Sixth, there were subterranean waterways.

Cave networks under my feet could be formed by burrowers, but the irregular nature of them meant water had coursed through them... and in case of several of them, some sort of water still was. I could feel it vibrating against my Domain, even if only rarely did it come into actual range, but the existence of tunnels of liquid coming out of the Warp definitely gave me pause... especially if the tunnels and flowpaths were the kind set up by the ages...

Water had once flowed through the stones beneath my feet. Hellworld, my arse...

-------

I took occasional breaks from endless skimming of stone, jumping cracks less than a hundred yards across, and taking detours of sometimes hundreds of miles to cross canyons and chasms that went down just too far which I had to go around.

Of course, I did go down a few of them as they descended to the bowels of the planet, and generally didn’t have to descend too far before some spideroids had crossed even the massive gaps with web structures, which was enough anchor to keep my lived-line intact, even if they later fell away. Temporal rules were weird enough, I didn’t question them. If I had to hack my way through dozens of house-sized spideroids of various kinds as I trotted along a web that refused to cut me or stick to me, well, win-win!

I would swing out far enough from the plateau to get into areas surveyed by satellite, establish a GPS lock above the Haze with a drone launch I was carrying around solely for that purpose, and then swing back on course, leaving a trail of dead things.

Doing so basically confirmed everyone’s analysis that spatial bending was going on, as I had travelled about thirty percent further than my GPS coordinates would indicate. I should have passed the northernmost edge of the area, and instead hadn’t even reached it yet.

The roiling boundary area was throwing off fairly regular spatial disturbances and erratic temporal ones, although not very strong in the latter. So, less fast or slow time than reverse, none, or normal, eddying and ebbing back and forth. Of course, that didn’t mean there weren’t accelerated temporal regions inside...

---

As I was circumnavigating this big zone, I was naturally also going to be passing other mining zones and mega- or kilocities. The mining zones would run up to the foothills of the plateau, but no closer, so taking a detour to sweep my lived-line closer wasn’t much. Getting close to the cities generally involved almost a day of shifting course, running along the walls of the sprawling megaplexes, or in one case, a ravaged ruin wailing with the ghosts of the dead, and yet slowly and laboriously being rebuilt, or at least stripped and salvaged, by the other mega-cities and planetary governor. Naturally its durasteel foundation and a considerable number of Underspire dwellers were still alive down below, living on soylent, gak, and one another...

As long as I got this initial run down, flying to the cities, or even teleporting, would be fine, as I could simply hook into the extant lived-line if need be. Double duty was a fine thing by me.

It was a lot of running, but I didn’t mind. My thoughtstreams were always busy, as I didn’t need to be somewhere to tell people what to do, and to give and receive information. I was at the heart of the most immediate and multi-faceted information network on the planet. A lot of my running was in a fugue state, recording information and passing it on.

The Map, and the untold amounts of wealth it showed, kept growing. Karmic gains were steady, certainly enough to pay for what I was spending every day as I was growing my Marshal and Warlord capacities... and, of course, spending Deep and Broad. The fun of the far future demanded all of the Skill Ranks I could give them, and even a 40+ Intellect wasn’t giving me enough.

Too much stuff I needed to know, because I didn’t have anyone to split the load with yet... although Briggs would be trying soon enough.

When we started making some serious Karma together, that would be pretty good...

-------------------------

Multiple detonations blew against the Shield Briggs had put up, hammering against the psi-enhanced, Full-Tempered, and Hardened Adamantine.

Much of the force was shunted away and above him by the Focus, the rest just hammered into his heavyfoot and was conducted away, blasting away the sand and dust beneath his boots.

His arm came whipping down, and the air cracked and roared in the wake of the blow as he let go of Beat.

The glowing Hammer crashed into the chest of Maunat ‘The Unnatural’, drawing heavy sparks from his force field. Beat ricocheted off and back to Briggs’ hand, but he didn’t even catch it, slamming it with his fist using Arrow Reflection, and before the field could recover, the Hammer was coming back.

It wasn’t a Sun Strike, but did have Bane, Breaking, and Sundering, in addition to Lightning, so it was plenty enough to smash into the field projector and render it into scattered parts.

The Number One on the Battleboard only staggered for a moment, red cybereyes refocusing as he realized his renewable protection was gone, and the mini-missiles somehow hadn’t done a damn thing to the power-armored giant opposite him –

A third bouncing Hammer smashed into his right shoulder mount, sending it flying before the autoloader could finish rearming the missiles. Maunat’s autocannon limbs sent AP slugs flying, but the Ancient was both fast and didn’t need to see him to close on him, even as his mechanical legs backpedaled faster than anything human could possibly do while supporting that much weight.

He lashed out with a razor chain, flexible blades spinning around it, aiming it to whip around that impossibly obdurate Shield. Instead, the Shield was snapped sideways, and a line of golden force slammed the whip to the ground, crunching into the metal and severing the links, sending razored bits cascading in every action as the power circuit of the chain proper crackled futilely against the edge of the Shield.

His fist whipped out again, psychic light flared, and the Hammer was coming back low-

The Unnatural lurched as his hip servo blew open, and he cut loose the useless chain as his upper leg-pistons locked in place. He skidded to a halt, dropping his middle claw servo to support himself. He could move his lower leg up and down, but the rest was locked. He adjusted immediately and jetted off to increase his distance, keeping up a line of slugs as Briggs straightened up and smoothly caught his Hammer, slugs whining loudly as they bounced off his Shield.

The plasma horn atop his head was still intact, and flared for a second, limned by the power of a Sun Shot.

Melted durasteel hissed against the sand as the bracing servo-arm was cut free. Maunat instantly responded with his quadruple short-beam lasers, a steel-cutting array of crimson that caught Briggs in mid-charge... and did absolutely nothing, playing over his armor uselessly.

Everyone knew that heat didn’t slow Briggs in the slightest, and using particle beams was an exercise in futility. Maunat swore to himself and launched wired power-spikes with adamant tips, capable of punching into that Shield and dragging it away-

The Shield was angled just so, psychic force flared against a power field, denying the spikes the chance to bite in, and the spikes just whined as they spiraled uselessly to the side.

Briggs was coming fast, every stride low, yet covering twice the ground it should have... which was a lot of ground. He was fast, nimble, all that weight and armor worn as if they weighed nothing.

Maunat fired off a net and bola together, one high, one low. Instead of using the shield on one and Hammering the other, Briggs bounded aside so nimbly he might have been prescient. One side of the explosive bola slammed into the Shield he was pivoting on, blowing up and sending the other on its way uselessly. The auto-correcting net splaying wide like a spider and adjusting to follow him was swatted away by Beat, a blast of electricity backed by a Sun Strike’s psychic force ripping through it. It blew apart in a writhing mass of lightning and shrapnel, and he barely broke stride.

His foot hit the ground, and the flash of the Interdiction went off. Maunat wanted to curse as his anti-grav failed and his thrusters couldn’t take his weight, slamming him back down to the ground. He had to lay off the constant fire, his ammunition was running out, even with the Compressed Magazine, and none of the rounds had done more than scuff the surface of that Shield.

Damn, what kind of Shield was that?

Briggs was coming, coming so damn fast, looking like a mountain in motion, giving an impression of looming even though Maunat’s own rig was technically faster and bigger.

His topmost razor-limbs snapped into place. That Shield couldn’t be in front and on top at the same time, and Briggs’ power armor wasn’t nearly as tough as that Shield. If he lifted it, he’d get an Impact Fist and full salvo right in the chest-

Briggs went down as they closed instead, sliding along the ground as if it was slick ice instead of sand and stone. The Shield covered him from every attack as Beat came out and crashed against the cyborg’s immovable leg, and tore it right off its gearing.

Manuat went down sideways, not having an arm to catch himself, even as Briggs rose behind him.

“WHAMWHAMWHAM!” the crowd roared out as the blows came down even faster than they shouted. It was like watching an automaton power-smashing a toy, not a living being, even in power armor. Briggs’ Triple Sun Strike finishing combo was a city-wide meme by now.

Manuat’s razor arms' housing was shredded before they could reverse properly, tumbling away uselessly. The Hammer pounded in with the terrifying third Sun Strike, shearing through his primary power coupling... and ending up crackling right next to his face.

Maunat turned his dermal-plated face sideways, crimson optics narrowing as a fourth Sun Strike ignited on the blue-black of the adamant Hammer. If it was discharged here, his cranial mods would fry and lobotomize him instantly.

His rear camera could also see the plasma horn on Brigg’s helm also powering up. If the Hammer didn’t shut him down, a point-blank shot through his razor-limbs’ housing and into his command circuitry would slag everything inside his carapace pretty much instantly.

Carefully, he raised his Impact Fist and tapped it to the sands, powering down his other systems abruptly.

He wasn’t the Number One anymore... if his face was able to move anymore, he would have grimaced. It was going to happen eventually, but he had always expected it to be a different cyborg finally winning the rock-paper-scissors of competing tech, not some flesh and blood, utterly uncybered brute in power armor, using a hammer of all things!